Do African American women rely too much on "faith and fads" to lose weight? A study in the current issue of the journal Health Communication suggests the answer to that question is "yes."
According to a study conducted by University of Iowa researcher Shelly Campo, "African American women's magazines are more likely to encourage fad diets and reliance on faith to lose weight."
This contrasts with magazines oriented at white women which were found to focus more on evidence-based diet strategies.
The study comes in the wake of recent government reports showing that by age 40 nearly 75 percent of Black women are considered overweight or obese compared to roughly 30 percent of white women. In releasing her report, Campo was critical of magazines oriented at Black women saying, "If you are not covering evidence based weight loss strategies, you're not helping your community."
The study found that the Black magazines studied emphasized God or faith 10 percent of the time in weight-loss stories while there was almost no such emphasis in white magazines.
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